


And All the Stars Watching

by rabitty



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Artificial Intelligence, Asexual Character, Blood and Gore, Clones, Colonization, Consensual Infidelity, F/F, F/M, Gay Sex, Genetic Engineering, Genetically Engineered Beings, Interspecies Romance, Isolation, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Outer Space, Polyamory, Space Marines, War, Worm Holes, kinda not really, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:06:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4071217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabitty/pseuds/rabitty





	And All the Stars Watching

By the early 21st century, Earth was at a tipping point. Humankind had boxed itself onto a rotten and dying world, one which it had poisoned with its own hand. Populations rose to the point of unsustainability. The melting of millennia old ice caps raised sea levels. Transnational corporations flooded the environment with pollution from millions of their factories. Crops failed to produce. Drought and runoff decimated fresh water supplies. Nations were torn apart by war, famine and disease, fighting over limited resources. Neighbor turned against neighbor in a desperate bid for survival. After thousands of years of culture, the thin veneer of society fell back to reveal the savagery that had always lurked in humanity's heart. Terrorist groups and Doomsday cults amassed mind boggling numbers of followers, tearing families and friends away from each other. One minute, India was declaring war on the Confederation of Emirate States, the next, South East Asia was a nuclear waste, a stark chemical desert on the planet's face. Nuclear war heads were detonated, dirty bombs and old hydrogen bombs from mildewing stock piles were dropped on friend and foe alike.

The planet rebelled along with her children. Even as nations waged war her oceans swallowed Shanghai and New York, earthquakes crumbled capitals and volcanoes blotted out the sky with clouds of hot ash. Day turned to night, the only light coming from fires ravaging the deadened forests.Those who lived through it call it simply the Dark Times.

When the dust settled and smoke cleared, the fighting finally ended for lack of things to use against one another. The war had lasted less than five years and eliminated nearly eighty percent of the global population. The survivors, weak and weary, from the hand full of nations that had managed to survive united, determined to never again put their home in such a perilous state nor to ever again turn against their brothers and sisters. 

Sixty five percent of the land was either under water or uninhabitable for at least the next century. The survivors built underground cities and massive purification towers to try to stabilize their ravaged world. Diana Clarke, president of the North American Union, brought together the leaders of China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, the European Alliance, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Mexico and founded the Commonwealth of Remnant Nations. The CRN worked tirelessly to revitalize their barren world and to bring hope to the desperate of downtrodden survivors. Still, it was not enough. A small fraction of society, known as the Runners, believed that the Earth was too far gone to help and feared the growing strength of the CRN. The only hope for future free generations was to flee Earth and find a new home among the stars. 

Their fledgling attempts to colonize Mars in the early 2020s were violently wrested from them and taken over by the CRN, forced to submit or flee. Many stayed behind to accept defeat, but the few who refused to bow made their home on the ETH Rankin, an early model of the space habitats the CRN had been putting into orbit over the years around Earth.

Over the following decades, the CRN worked tirelessly to create and launch these space complexes, improving them so much that by 2071 the Russian Gagarin Station had a max first generation population of over thirty five thousand people. In the mid '70s, the Seuta Ju and Lan Dan stations began oversight of colonization and terraforming operations on Venus as colonization of Mars was already largely completed. Mining facilities were established in the Asteroid Belt past Mars and on the major Jovian moons to produce sufficient material for the rapid expansion of humanity's dominion.

By 2079, seven and a half decades and several generations since the Dark Times, it was estimated more than half of humanity lived off world on stations or in colonies. Over the years, space station citizens began to resent the CRN and the privileges it afforded to Earthborn.

As technology advanced, terrestrial cities rebuilt and Earth's environment salvaged, the CRN had moved away from being a cooperative decision making organization of nations to a strong central political power. It governed humans all over the Sol system. The laws it enacted worked to ensure that no station or colony could legally gain independence. Migration limitations were strictly enforced for any attempting to land planetside, what with resources and physical space remaining scarce. Only those with an Earth passport were allowed to vote in interplanetary elections or be raised to a governorship and heavy taxes were placed on all off worlders.

More and more disillusioned CRN citizens began to slip over to the side of the Independent Allied Stations, the descendants of the Runners who had fled from Earth and Mars all those years ago to hide in the shadow of Saturn's rings. The ETH Rankine was joined by the Gagarin, Kennedy and Clarke stations in defiance of the CRN's control of the solar system.

Thus began fifteen years of tensions between the CRN and the IAS as an increasing number of people fled the Commonwealth's tyrannical rule, culminating in the Battle of Titan with heavy casualties on both sides. 

Even as war ended, both sides leery of continued war with the threat of the Dark Times so fresh in their collective memories, tensions remained between the CRN and the IAS. A firmly enforced border between both sides' territories was set midway between Jupiter and Saturn, consigning the IAS to the outer rim of the Sol system.

As the CRN colonies flourished and terraformed worlds succeeded, the IAS remembered their founders' dream. IAS scientists began to look to Saturn's moons for possible terrestrial habitations, only to be turned away by the Martian crime lords that had set up bases on Titan to smuggle illegal goods outside of CRN jurisdiction through IAS controlled space. Then, in 2096, an IAS probe scouting Triton found something strange. Standing solitary and solemn on the moon's surface, large and ovoid in shape, was a metal ring with an opening in the center large enough to fly the IAS stations abreast through.

They had discovered ancient alien technology, proof that they were not alone in the universe, perhaps not even alone in their own solar system. Instead of allowing the CRN to catch wind of their find, a group of researchers investigated the mega structure and spent the next three years trying to determine its use. They found out quite by accident what they did when a small transport shuttle experienced engine failure flying by the structure. When it passed through the center, the shuttle disappeared for over an hour before reappearing. Images captured by the shuttle depicted strange constellations and solar systems. They realized what they were. It was a stabilized worm hole, capable of taking them to a preprogrammed destination within the galaxy and beyond.

Information of the discovery was leaked from a source in the Command Council that ruled the IAS to the general public. With the rise of the Seeder Cult in the IAS main fleet, the dominant religion at that time founded by Jonathan Weber, the Command Council was pushed to act, fueled by the Runners' original goal; to find a new Earth, a new place to call home. The Seeder Cult had risen above Earth faiths in the years following the IAS's war with the CRN. The followers, Seeders, believed it was humanity's duty and destiny to spread the species across the galaxy, that it was Man's divine duty to terraform and cultivate life on alien worlds. The alien object was seen as a divine tool gifted to humankind to accomplish their sacred duty.  

When it was learned that the Jump Gate, as it had been nicknamed, lead to a star system with possibly habitable worlds, the resulting argument over the best course of action lasted months. In the Tenth Month of 2112, over a century since the outbreak of the Dark Times , the Command Council of the IAS, following the majority of voters' will, elected four ships to under take the mission of finding possibly habitable planets to colonize.

Four ships, the Redman II, the Little Sister, the Sämaschine and the Aratana Kibo, representing each station were outfitted with crews, terraforming supplies and volunteer colonists. 

And so humanity escaped the bonds of their solar system and reached beyond like their ancestors fleeing a desecrated Earth to find a new home among the stars.


End file.
